The present invention relates to a device for providing connection elements, which provides rivet elements or the like.
Rivet connections have played an important role for many years in the aviation industry in particular. The automation of riveting applications is becoming increasingly significant since aircraft components are becoming increasingly larger.
In addition to carrying out riveting applications using rivet tools, providing rivet elements specifically and rapidly via related motion control poses a particular challenge to system manufacturers.
A known device for providing rivets (EP 1 531 966 B1) is equipped with a rivet storage unit designed as a cartridge cabinet comprising a number of rivet cartridges stacked one above the other. Using a transfer carriage which can be moved along the rivet cartridges, rivet elements are transferred from the particular rivet cartridge that has arrived to a rivet outlet.
The rivet cartridges of the known devices for providing rivets can be replaced manually from the front side of the device for providing rivets, in particular when the rivet supply in the rivet cartridge has been fully consumed. To this end, the rivet cartridges can be slid into an operating position via a cartridge guide. A cartridge lock is assigned to each rivet cartridge to fix the rivet cartridges in the particular operating position.
The cartridge lock is usually assigned to a front-side frame of the device for providing rivets. The cartridge lock must be oriented exactly when first installed for the cartridge lock to be positioned exactly relative to the rivet cartridge. The reason for this is that the known system has very considerable tolerances between the front-side frame and the rest of the device for providing rivets, in particular the cartridge guide.